The Last Hellion

by Loretta Chase

  He didn’t look up from his work but took his time, arranging the coals just so with the poker, applying the bellows to set the tidy stack aglow.

  He did it with the smooth competence of one who’d been doing it for ages, though this was lowly work, beneath a footman’s dignity, let alone that of a peer of the realm.

  Lydia’s gaze strayed over his broad shoulders, down over the strong back that tapered to lean waist and hips.

  She felt a surge of longing. She beat it down.

  “Or perhaps you call it a privilege,” she continued, “to be obliged to live within an exceedingly narrow set of rules dictating what I may and may not say, do, or think?”

  He rose finally and turned to her, his expression infuriatingly calm. “You might consider Miss Price, for whose precious trinkets you risked your life,” he said. “As Duchess of Ainswood, you could dower her, which would allow her to wed to her liking.”

  Lydia opened her mouth to point out the fallacy of assuming that Miss Price needed to be wed any more than Miss Grenville did. But her conscience sprang up and shrieked, How do you know? And Lydia found herself staring speechlessly at Ainswood while her mind churned.

  What if Tamsin did fancy Trent? His funds were very limited, everyone knew. If they wed, they’d have nothing to live on. But no, Tamsin wasn’t interested in him in that way, Lydia argued with her conscience. He was odd, and the girl was no more than curious, as she was about everything and everyone.

  Then what of Tamsin’s future? her conscience asked gloomily. If you contract a fatal disease or have a fatal accident, what becomes of her?

  “You write constantly about London’s unfortunates,” Ainswood went on, while she was still wrestling with the problem of Tamsin. “About injustice, generally. I daresay it hasn’t occurred to you that the Duchess of Ainswood could, if she chose, wield considerable political influence. You’d have the opportunity to browbeat any number of members of Parliament into passing Peel’s bill for a Metropolitan Police Force, for instance.”

  He wandered to the bookshelf and studied her Annual Register collection. “Then there’s the issue of child labor. That’s one of your pet causes, isn’t it? Along with public hygiene and the appalling conditions of the back-slums. And prison conditions. ‘Breeding places of vice and disease,’ you’ve called them.”

  Lydia remembered Sarah in her shabby, patched pinafores, playing in the stinking alleys, and the children she played with, many worse off than she.

  Lydia remembered the Marshalsea: the stench, the dirt, the diseases that spread unchecked through the squalor…the disease that had spread to her sister and killed her.

  Her throat tightened.

  “Education,” his deep voice went on, like a scourge, flaying her. “Medicine.” He turned toward her. “Did you know that Trent’s cousin, the Earl of Rawnsley’s young bride, is building a modern hospital in Dartmoor?”*

  Schooling…which Lydia had hungered for, and the books she’d craved. What would have become of her education, if not for Quith? Thanks to him, she’d had an education and discovered a means of making her way in the world independently. She was strong and determined, though. What of those who weren’t? And what of the weak and sickly, needing medicine, doctors, hospitals?

  “You could do something,” Ainswood said, “instead of simply writing about what is wrong.”

  If he’d spent years studying maps of her sore spots he couldn’t have targeted them more accurately or shot his verbal darts with more devastating impact.

  Lydia didn’t know when or how he’d studied her. All she knew was that, at that moment, she felt like the most selfish woman in all the world, rejecting the power and wealth to do good, merely to preserve her personal freedom.

  There had to be a flaw somewhere in this terrible logic of his, she told herself. There was an answer she could give him, surely, a proper setdown. Because he could not be entirely right and she entirely wrong. She knew the answer—the escape route—was there, somewhere in her agitated brain. She could almost—

  The thump at the door sent the elusive wisps in her mind scattering. The second thump knocked them away altogether. Lydia glared at the door, silently reviewing every oath she knew.

  “Kitchen,” she said in firm, carrying tones. “Back to the kitchen, Susan.”

  Outside the door, the dog began to whimper.

  “I collect Susan wants her mama,” Ainswood said. He went to the door.

  “You’d better not,” Lydia said as he grasped the handle.

  “I’m not afraid of a dog,” he said. He opened the door. Susan pushed past him as though he didn’t exist, and trotted to Lydia.

  She sniffed Lydia’s hand, then licked it. “You don’t have to make nice,” Lydia said, striving for patience. “It isn’t your fault he upset you.”

  “Did I upset you, Susan?”

  Lydia’s gaze swung back to him.

  Ainswood was watching the dog, his brow furrowed, his wicked mouth turned down. “You’re much too big a creature to be cooped up in a little kitchen of a little house. No wonder you’re so high-strung.”

  “She is not high-strung!” Lydia snapped. “Everyone knows that mastiffs—”

  “At Longlands, she’d have acres and acres to run and play in. And other mastiffs to play with. Would you like that, Susan?” he asked, his voice gentling. He crouched down. “Wouldn’t you like to have a lot of playmates, and acres and acres to explore with them?” He gave a low, musical whistle.

  Susan’s ears pricked up, but she refused to turn.

  “Su-san,” he crooned. “Su-u-san.”

  Susan circled her mistress, then paused, her gaze settling on him. “Gr-rr-rr,” she said.

  Lydia knew that growl. It wasn’t in the least threatening. It was Susan’s sulky growl.

  Don’t you dare, Lydia commanded silently. Don’t you succumb to him, too.

  “Come, Susan.” He patted his knee. “Don’t you want to come and bite my face off? Your mama wishes you would. Su-u-u-san.”

  “Grrr-rr-rrr,” said Susan.

  But she was only playing hard to get, the wicked creature. After a moment, she started meandering toward him, feigning interest in a corner of the desk first, then studying a corner of the rug. She took her time, but she went to him.

  Lydia watched her in utter disgust.

  “I thought you had taste, Susan,” she muttered.

  The dog looked back, briefly, at Lydia, then started sniffing at His Grace. He remained crouched, his expression ostensibly sober while Susan sniffed his face, his ears, his neck, his mangled clothes, and—of course—his crotch.

  Lydia’s neck burned, and the heat spread upward and downward. Susan was bound to be intrigued because her mistress’s scent must be all over him, as his was all over Lydia. Ainswood obviously realized this. The amusement in his eyes when his glance caught Lydia’s told her so.

  She was already heated. That green glint of humor merely ignited a temper already smoldering.

  “I should like to know why, suddenly, you’re concerned with unfortunates, including my sadly abused dog,” she said tartly. “Since when have you become Saint Ainswood?”

  He scratched behind Susan’s ears. Susan grumbled and looked away, but she bore it well enough.

  “I merely pointed out a few matters you couldn’t be bothered to think about,” he said innocently.

  Lydia came ’round the desk and strode to the fireplace. “You’ve been playing on my sympathies as though they were harp strings. You—”

  “What do you expect me to do?” he cut in. “Play fair? With a woman who makes up her own rules as she goes along?”

  “I expect you to take no for an answer!”

  He rose. “I should like to know what you’re afraid of.”

  “Afraid?” Her voice climbed. “Afraid? Of you?”

  “The only reason I can think of for your rejecting an opportunity to run the world as you see fit is fear that you can’t manage the man offering the opp
ortunity.”

  “You can think of only one reason because your mind is too narrow to fit any other in.” She took up the poker and stabbed at the coals. “Ever since I admitted I was a virgin you’ve developed a virulent case of chivalry. First you decided to nobly forsake me.” She straightened and shoved the poker back onto its rack. “Now you’ve decided to save me from ruin—which would be mildly amusing if you were not so curst obstinate and underhand about it.”

  “You find my behavior mildly amusing?” he asked. “What do you think is my reaction when I hear Miss Queen of Playactors, Miss Fraud of the Century, accuse me of being ‘underhand’?”

  She swung away from the chimneypiece. “Whatever else I’ve done, I haven’t used tricks or playacting to make you follow me. You’re the one who’s been spying on me, dogging my footsteps. Then, when I’m ready to give you what you want, you decide it isn’t enough. I have to give up my freedom, my career, my friends, and vow unswerving devotion until death us do part.”

  “In exchange for wealth, rank, and power to do what you’ve been trying to do anyway,” he said impatiently.

  Susan looked at him, then at Lydia. She ambled to her mistress and nuzzled her leg. Lydia ignored her. “The price is too high!” she raged. “I don’t need your—”

  “You needed me tonight, didn’t you?” he interrupted. “You admitted as much, or have you forgotten?”

  “That doesn’t mean I want to be attached to you permanently!”

  Susan sank down before the hearth, grumbling.

  Ainswood leaned back against the door, folding his arms. “You might not have lived to engage in tonight’s enterprise if I hadn’t been about last night,” he said levelly. “You might not have lived to sashay about Covent Garden last night if I hadn’t taken you out of Jerrimer’s before Coralie and her cutthroat minions penetrated your disguise. And if I hadn’t come along in Vinegar Yard, one of Coralie’s cohorts might have planted a knife in your back while you were daring and daunting the rest of the world. Not to mention that you might have killed Bertie Trent if I hadn’t been on the spot to pull him out of the way.”

  “I came nowhere near killing him, you blind—”

  “You drive in the same unthinking, headstrong way you do everything else.”

  “I’ve been driving for years and never once caused injury to human or animal,” she said coldly. “Which is more than you can say. That demented hell-for-leather race of yours on the king’s birthday ended with two fine animals having to be destroyed.”

  That dart penetrated.

  “Not my animals!” He jerked away from the door.

  Having finally found Lord Superior Male’s sore spot, Lydia ruthlessly pressed her advantage.

  “It was your doing,” she returned. “That mad race on the Portsmouth Road was your idea, according to Sellowby. He told Helena that you challenged your fellows—”

  “It was a fair race!” His color darkened. “It was not my fault that ham-fisted idiot Crenshaw abused his cattle.”

  “Ah, so he was incompetent despite being a superior male. Yet I cannot be considered a capable whip simply because I’m a woman.”

  “A whip? You?” Ainswood laughed. “Is that what you fancy yourself—a candidate for the Four-in-Hand Club?”

  “You fancy I’m no match for you or any of your clodpole friends?” she returned.

  “If you attempted that course, you’d land in a ditch before the second stage.”

  Lydia covered the distance between them in three angry strides. “Oh, would I?” she asked, her voice taunting. “How much would you care to wager?”

  His green eyes flashed. “Anything you name.”

  “Anything?”

  “Name it, Grenville.”

  Lydia thought quickly, assessing his previous assault on her unreasonable conscience. Here was the solution.

  “Five thousand pounds for Miss Price,” she said, “and a thousand each to any three charitable causes I name—and you agree to take your seat in the House of Lords and exert your influence to pass the police bill.”

  He stood, hands clenching and unclenching.

  “Are the stakes too high for you?” she asked. “Perhaps you are not so sure, after all, of my incompetence.”

  “I’d like to know how sure you are of mine,” he said. “What will you stake, Grenville?” He advanced another pace to loom over her, his mocking green gaze slanting down his nose as though she were ever so small and inferior. “How about your precious freedom? Are you confident enough to risk that?”

  Well before he’d finished speaking, Lydia saw what she’d done: the corner she’d let pride and temper box her into.

  She paused but a moment as the realization struck, yet it was enough for Ainswood to assume she was entertaining doubts, for the world’s most patronizing smile curved his wicked mouth and the world’s most aggravating glints of laughter lit his green eyes.

  Then it was too late for second thoughts. The inner voice of reason was no match for the roar of Ballister pride, fueled by centuries of Ballister drive to conquer, crush, and in general pound whatever stood in its path into abject submission.

  Lydia could not back down. She could not do or say anything that looked like doubt, because that was the same as admitting weakness or, God forbid, fear.

  “My freedom, then,” she said, her voice low and hard, her chin high. “If I can’t beat you, I’ll marry you.”

  They would set out from Newington Gate at eight o’clock sharp next Wednesday morning, regardless of weather, illness, or Acts of Parliament or of God. Backing out, for any reason, would equal losing—with the same consequences. They would each take one passenger to alert tollgate keepers and hostlers and pay tolls. They would drive single-horse vehicles, commencing the first stage with their own cattle. Thereafter, they would take the best available at the changes. The finish line was the Anchor Inn in Liphook.

  It took less than half an hour to settle upon the terms. It took a fraction of that time for Vere to comprehend the enormity of his error, but even then it was already far too late to retreat.

  The June race was a sore point with him. It was Fate’s own perversity that had put the goading words in her mouth. And he, provocateur par excellence, had let himself be provoked. He’d lost his self-control along with his temper, and so lost control of everything.

  In June, at least, he’d had the excuse of being three sheets in the wind when he’d challenged a roomful of men to reenact the chariot races of ancient Rome upon a busy English coaching road. By the time he came to his senses—to sobriety, in other words—it was the next morning and he was sitting in his phaeton at the starting line with nearly a dozen other vehicles arrayed on either side of him.

  The race had been a nightmare. Drunken observers as well as drivers caused property damage totaling several hundred pounds; four competitors suffered broken limbs; two carriages were demolished; and two horses had to be put down.

  Vere had paid for everything, and certainly hadn’t forced his idiot friends into racing. Nonetheless, the papers, politicians, and preachers held him personally and solely responsible—not simply for the race in particular but, judging by their extravagant oratory, for the downfall of civilization in general.

  He was well aware that, loud, rude, and crude, he made a prime target for reformers and other pious hypocrites. Unfortunately, he was also well aware that there wouldn’t have been an insane race and consequent public uproar if he’d kept his big mouth shut.

  At present, he hadn’t even the excuse of inebriation. Stone-cold sober he’d flapped his fool tongue, and in a few moronic words undone what he’d so carefully constructed while tending the fire: the logical and virtually irresistible—for her—argument for matrimony.

  And now he could scarcely see straight, let alone think straight, because his brain was conjuring images of smashed-up carriages and mangled bodies and screaming horses, and this time it was her carriage, her screaming horse, her mangled body.

 
; The nightmarish images accompanied him as he exited the study and headed down the hall, and crashes and screams rang in his head as he jerked open the door…and nearly trod down Bertie Trent, who had his hand upraised to grasp the knocker.

  In the same instant, Vere heard heavy doggy paws thundering behind him, and swiftly moved aside, to avoid being knocked aside, as Susan leapt upon her beloved.

  “I should like to know what is so irresistible about him,” Vere muttered.

  The mastiff stood on her hind legs, her forepaws on Bertie’s chest while she tried to lick his face off.

  “Drat you, Susan, get down,” His Grace commanded irritably. “Down.”

  To his amazement, she obeyed, releasing Bertie so abruptly that he would have fallen over the threshold if Miss Price hadn’t grabbed his arm and jerked him upright.

  “Oh, I say, much obliged.” Bertie grinned at her. “By gad, you’ve a strong grip for such a little female—mean to say, not little, exactly,” he added quickly, the grin fading. “That is—” He broke off, his gaze alighting on Vere in what seemed to be belated recognition. “Oh, I say. Didn’t know you was here, Ainswood. Anything amiss?”

  Vere grasped Susan’s collar and pulled her back from the doorway so that the pair could enter. “Nothing amiss,” he said tightly. “I was just leaving.”

  He released Susan, bade the decidedly curious Miss Price a terse good night, and hurried out.

  As he was yanking open the carriage door, he heard Bertie calling to him to wait.

  Vere did not want to wait. He wanted to make for the nearest tavern posthaste, and start drinking and continue drinking until Wednesday morning. But he hadn’t been able to make anything happen as he wanted since the day he’d first collided with Miss Nemesis Grenville, and so he supposed he was getting used to it, and only swallowed a sigh and waited for Bertie to make his adieux to Miss Price.

  It seemed to Lydia that Ainswood had scarcely sauntered out of the study before Tamsin was hurrying in, Susan at her heels.